Mykyta Savych Varrava (c. 1870 - 1939) was a bandura player; a participant in the anti-Bolshevik movement as part of the Kuban Army. He was born in the village of Starodereviankivska in the Kuban.
Biography.
A typical type of sighted historical kobzar. He learnt his kobzar studies from the village kobzars. He played the diatonic bandura, which he constructed himself. He performed a lot and fruitfully, mainly in the North Caucasus and Donbas. He was fond of the fair audience, particularly in his native village. During the Revolution, he performed in the ranks of the Kuban Army. In the 1920s, during the period of Ukrainianisation, he began an active concert career. His repertoire was dominated by historical songs and dumas, including "About the Cossack Holota", "Slave Lamentations", etc. His favourite, almost biographical, song was about hard labour on the construction of a canal: "Hey, she gave, she gave the glorious Cossacks a salary, that queen who put shackles on their hands, gave them shovels... Hey, she also sent them to do 'easy' work and dig canals..." "I remembered this song because my grandfather used to sing and cry," recalled the bandura player's grandson, poet Ivan Varrava.
In the 1930s, he was sentenced by the NKVD to 10 years in the Solovetsky concentration camp. Solovetsky concentration camps. During interrogations, he was tortured ("his lungs were beaten off"). In the concentration camp, he fell ill with tuberculosis. Despite his illness, he escaped from Solovki. He died of tuberculosis in the village of Staromenska.
The instruments are kept in the Museum of Kobzars of Crimea and Kuban.
